Along with the increase in size and improvement in performance of a display screen, a TV has been used not only for simply watching a broadcasting program or a movie but also for, for example, browsing a wide variety of information through the connection to the Internet, linking with a device connected to a network at home, or executing various applications for viewing a photo or playing a game.
In view of such a situation, development of an operating apparatus which allows a user to perform an input operation with a higher degree of freedom and with more intuition will become essential in addition to a conventionally known typical input device including buttons, in order to operate multiple and diverse functions and applications expected to be developed further.
A pointing device is an input device which can specify a given position or a direction by controlling a pointer or a cursor indicated on the display screen. Examples of the pointing devices are, a touchpad, a trackball, a joystick, and a mouse. As compared to the input device configured with buttons only, the pointing device allows a more intuitive and easy direction of a given position and selection of a menu or an object, regardless of the structure of the GUI and content of application. Therefore, in recent years, many pointing devices have been mounted with, for example, a mobile phone, an AV apparatus, and a game machine.
Among them, the touchpad is characterized by intuition, which allows a user to operate by directly touching the touchpad itself. Along with an improvement of a sensing technology for the touchpad, a touchpad is under development which allows the user a high-level input operation such as to operate not only with one finger but also with a gesture concurrently using two fingers. More specifically, the touchpad can be operated not only with one hand but also with both hands. Furthermore, there is a method to implement an operation that is high in the degree of freedom by mounting touchpads on a single operating apparatus. Such an operation allows the user to perform operation of various kinds or high in the degree of freedom quickly and in a short time as compared to the case where the user operates a single touchpad with one finger. Accordingly, the touchpad is expected to continue to be applied to more and more information apparatuses and home appliances, as an input device.
The PTL 1 discloses a remote control for a home appliance mounted with a touchpad. The remote control disclosed in the PTL 1 includes a touchpad on its chassis, and the touchpad is used to operate an object on a display screen. More specifically, the touchpad corresponds to operation regions on the display screen and an operation on the touchpad can be reflected on the operation region.
Furthermore, the touchpad can concurrently detect equal to or more than two touches, thereby allow an operation using both hands concurrently. In addition, it is possible to adaptively change the correspondence between input regions on the touchpad and the operation regions on the display screen, depending on the location of the object on the display screen, the direction of the chassis held by the user, or an application.
As an example, when a keyboard displayed on the display screen is operated using the touchpad, the left-half input region of the touchpad is allocated to the left-half region of the keyboard on the display screen, and the right-half input region of the touchpad is allocated to the right-half region of the keyboard on the display screen. As another example, when a word prediction list (a word list) is further displayed on the display screen, it is possible to allocate the left-half of the input region of the touchpad to the operation performed on the word list, and the right-half of the input region of the touchpad to operation performed on the whole region of the keyboard on the display screen.